Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

European bur-reed

Sparganium emersum

Also called Unbranched Bur-reed, Small Bur Reed, Emersed Burreed, Green Fruited Burreed, Unbranched Burreed

European bur-reed
Photo: G.-U. Tolkiehn, CC BY 3.0
Family
Typhaceae (Typh family)
Grows as
Aquatic, Perennial
Native range
Temp. Northern Hemisphere
Climate
temperate

About

Sparganium emersum is a species of flowering plant in the cat-tail family known by the common names European bur-reed and unbranched bur-reed. It has a circumboreal distribution, occurring throughout the northern latitudes of Eurasia and North America. It is an aquatic plant, growing in shallow water bodies such as ponds and streams. It can become abundant at times. It is a perennial herb producing a floating stem up to 2 meters long. The leaves may be limp and floating or stiff and erect, emerging above the water surface. The leaves are flat and straplike, sometimes with a triangular, keeled base that can help distinguish it from the similar Sparganium angustifolium. It is monoecious, individual plants bearing both male and female inflorescences.

Other Sparganium plants

American bur-reed · Narrowleaf bur-reed · Simplestem bur-reed · Broadfruit bur-reed · Floating bur-reed · Clustered bur-reed · Sparganium gramineum · Small bur-reed · Bur-reed

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sparganium emersum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…